I learned to embrace my shape at a very young age. Or at the very least, accept it for what it is. I first acknowledged that I had child bearing hips when I was 12 years old. It took another ten years to grow into them. Once in a blue moon somebody will attempt to insult me by pointing out that my physique is perfectly designed to fill out my evolutionary purpose. While they never articulate it quite in that manner, the underlying message is the same. Of course, those who think that “you could spit out three at a time with those hips!” qualifies as a passable insult are generally too stupid to see it this way.
Tuesdays and Thursdays at Barbie Hagwon begin with a quartet of overactive 9 year old boys. They like to eat paper, run circles around the table, and tattle on one another for speaking Korea. Often, they will accidentally slip in some Korean while tattling on their friend. They’re all kinds of special.
When I first took over the class from the Not So Native English Speaker who left at the beginning of January, I found them completely unbearable. Just a couple of months later, I’ve trained to the point that they’ve completely lost interest in seeing who can piss me off the fastest. They’re still overactive and mildly irritating, but in a much more controlled fashion. In other words, I can usually get through a lesson without any outburst, which results in the reward of playing some lame game that I don’t particularly enjoy for the last 5 minutes of class.
Last Thursday, for the first time in months, I felt compelled to remove my coat in the classroom. It’s usually so bloody cold at Barbie Hawgon that I leave my ski coat on all day long. On this day, I was wearing a loose blouse and dress pants. Appropriate, and conservative. I make a point of dressing more conservatively here than I would in Canada Land, in the hopes of not drawing any more attention to myself than necessary. This is all in vain, of course, but I respect myself more for doing it.
I removed the coat and walked around the table to make sure that nobody was cheating in this horrible, horrible game that really sucks. If one of them is caught cheating, somebody else will get upset, and fisticuffs will ensue. Gotta nip that in the bud! Blood is messy. As I’m wandering, Leo Student stops whatever it was he was doing in this dumb, dumb game and says, “Teacher! Teacher!” His voice is rather grating when he repeats himself in this manner. I inquire as to what it is he wants. Leo Student says, “Teacher! Teacher hip!”
Colour me confused.
This is an introductory class, so I figured that it was grossly unlikely that he knew either the anatomical or slang meanings of the word hip. I assumed that I must have heard him wrong and made it clear that I thought he was making no sense. Leo Student was annoyed at this and repeated himself while smacking his right hip. “Teacher! Hip! It big. Hip big!”. Apparently Leo Student felt it was appropriate to play the role of Captain Obvious for us that day. I laughed and told him that some day he’s going to have big hips, too. Leo Student was saddened by this lie. Then he remembered that he was playing a really stupid game, and forgot all about Barbie Teacher's big hips.
God bless that stupid game. Whatever it's called.
The Talk is so not included in my job description.
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